by Dale Ahlquist I’ve heard the question more than once. It is asked by people who have just started to discover G.K. Chesterton. They have begun reading a Chesterton book, or perhaps have seen an issue of Gilbert, or maybe they’ve only encountered a series of pithy quotations that marvelously articulate some forgotten bit of common sense. They ask the question with a mixture of wonder, gratitude and…resentment. They are amazed by what they have discovered. They are thankful to have discovered it. And they are almost angry that it has taken so long for them to make the discovery. “Who is this guy…?” Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. Nor in one paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies that have been written of him, he has never been captured between the covers of one book. But rather than waiting to separate the goats from the sheep, let’s just come right out and say it: G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the 20th century. He said something about everything and he said it better than anybody else. But he was no mere wordsmith.

He was very good at expressing himself, but more importantly, he had something very good to express. The reason he was the greatest writer of the 20th century was because he was also the greatest thinker of the 20th century. Born in London, G.K. Chesterton was educated at St. Paul’s, but never went to college. He went to art school. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.

(To put it into perspective, four thousand essays is the equivalent of writing an essay a day, every day, for 11 years. If you’re not impressed, try it some time. But they have to be good essays – all of them – as funny as they are serious, and as readable and rewarding a century after you’ve written them.) Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. His writing remains as timely and as timeless today as when it first appeared, even though much of it was published in throw away papers. This man who composed such profound and perfect lines as “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried,” stood 6’4″ and weighed about 300 pounds, usually had a cigar in his mouth, and walked around wearing a cape and a crumpled hat, tiny glasses pinched to the end of his nose, swordstick in hand, laughter blowing through his moustache. And usually had no idea where or when his next appointment was.

He did much of his writing in train stations, since he usually missed the train he was supposed to catch. In one famous anecdote, he wired his wife, saying, “Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?” His faithful wife, Frances, attended to all the details of his life, since he continually proved he had no way of doing it himself. She was later assisted by a secretary, Dorothy Collins, who became the couple’s surrogate daughter, and went on to become the writer’s literary executrix, continuing to make his work available after his death. This absent-minded, overgrown elf of a man, who laughed at his own jokes and amused children at birthday parties by catching buns in his mouth, this was the man who wrote a book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S. Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India. This was a man who, when commissioned to write a book on St.

Thomas Aquinas, had his secretary check out a stack of books on St. Thomas from the library, opened the top book on the stack, thumbed through it, closed it, and proceeded to dictate a book on St. Thomas. Not just any book. The renowned Thomistic scholar, Ettienne Gilson, had this to say about it: I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a ‘clever’ book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas…cannot fail to perceive that the so-called ‘wit’ of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which we had tried to demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas.

Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being witty. That is all they can see of him. Chesterton debated many of the celebrated intellectuals of his time: George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow. According to contemporary accounts, Chesterton usually emerged as the winner of these contests, however, the world has immortalized his opponents and forgotten Chesterton, and now we hear only one side of the argument, and we are enduring the legacies of socialism, relativism, materialism, and skepticism. Ironically, all of his opponents regarded Chesterton with the greatest affection.

And George Bernard Shaw said: “The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton.” His writing has been praised by Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Karel Capek, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Claudel, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Sigrid Undset, Ronald Knox, Kingsley Amis, W.H. Auden, Anthony Burgess, E.F. Schumacher, Neil Gaiman, and Orson Welles. To name a few. T.S. Eliot said that Chesterton “deserves a permanent claim on our loyalty.” “…and why haven’t I heard of him? Why haven’t you heard of him? There are three answers to this question: I don’t know. You’ve been cheated. Chesterton is the most unjustly neglected writer of our time. Perhaps it is proof that education is too important to be left to educators and that publishing is too important to be left to publishers, but there is no excuse why Chesterton is no longer taught in our schools and why his writing is not more widely reprinted and especially included in college anthologies. Well, there is an excuse.

It seems that Chesterton is tough to pigeonhole, and if a writer cannot be quickly consigned to a category, or to one-word description, he risks falling through the cracks. Even if he weighs three hundred pounds. But there is another problem. Modern thinkers and commentators and critics have found it much more convenient to ignore Chesterton rather than to engage him in an argument, because to argue with Chesterton is to lose. Chesterton argued eloquently against all the trends that eventually took over the 20th century: materialism, scientific determinism, moral relativism, and spineless agnosticism. He also argued against both socialism and capitalism and showed why they have both been the enemies of freedom and justice in modern society. And what did he argue for? What was it he defended? He defended “the common man” and common sense. He defended the poor. He defended the family. He defended beauty. And he defended Christianity and the Catholic Faith. These don’t play well in the classroom, in the media, or in the public arena. And that is probably why he is neglected.

The modern world prefers writers who are snobs, who have exotic and bizarre ideas, who glorify decadence, who scoff at Christianity, who deny the dignity of the poor, and who think freedom means no responsibility. But even though Chesterton is no longer taught in schools, you cannot consider yourself educated until you have thoroughly read Chesterton. And furthermore, thoroughly reading Chesterton is almost a complete education in itself. Chesterton is indeed a teacher, and the best kind. He doesn’t merely astonish you. He doesn’t just perform the wonder of making you think. He goes beyond that. He makes you laugh. Discover Chesterton Mystery Scene How G.K. Chesterton’s "little priest" saved the soul of detective fiction 1924 illustration by Frank G. Jefferies In 1910 the world was on the brink of a new era. George V succeeded his father, King Edward, to the throne of England. Halley’s Comet made its perihelion, and a day later, as he predicted he would, Mark Twain died. William James and Leo Tolstoy passed later that same year.

Enrico Caruso’s performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera became the world’s first live musical broadcast on radio. Gaslit streets and hansom cabs were giving way to electric lights and motor cars. And one humble Catholic priest from Essex was about to shake up an entire literary genre. The priest was Father Brown, the invention of Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), a novelist, poet, and general man of letters. The story was “The Blue Cross,” first published in 1910. G.K. Chesterton eventually wrote over 50 stories about Father Brown. Their impact on crime fiction was enormous. According to critic Howard Haycraft, Chesterton’s “brilliant style and fertile imagination brought new blood to the genre; gave it a needed and distinctly ‘literary’ turn that was to have far-reaching effect.” The character of Father Brown was largely inspired by Chesterton’s friendship with Father John O’Connor. Chesterton met the parish priest in 1904 while on a lecture tour in Yorkshire. He was struck by the deep understanding this priest had of the human condition.

Far from being a sheltered innocent, in the course of his ministry Father O’Connor had observed humanity at its lowest.

Chesterton wrote, “It was a curious experience to find that this quiet and pleasant celibate had plumbed those abysses far deeper than I.” Once, when Chesterton and O’Conner were in a pub chatting with a pair of Cambridge undergraduates, one of the students commented that people like O’Connor are “all shut up in a sort of cloister” and that rather than facing the evil that’s in the world, the priest was “afraid of knowledge.” Chesterton was intrigued by the comment and the extent to which his friend was underestimated, writing, “To me, still almost shivering with the appallingly practical facts of which the priest had warned me, this comment came with such a colossal and crushing irony, that I nearly burst into a loud harsh laugh.” Ever a lover of paradox, Chesterton began thinking about “making some artistic use of these comic yet tragic cross-purposes; and constructing a comedy in which a priest should appear to know nothing and in fact know more about crime than criminals.” Father John O’Connor (1870 - 1952), the inspiration for Chesterton’s clerical sleuth.

A New Kind of Detective At the time of the publication of the first Father Brown story, crime fiction fit into three fairly distinct categories based on the type of hero in the story: Police Officers, Great Detectives, and Gentleman Thieves. Police heroes include Charles Dickens’ Inspector Bucket in Bleak House, Wilkie Collins’ Scotland Yard detective Sgt. Cuff in The Moonstone, and a host of others in the sensational periodicals of the day. Sherlock Holmes exemplifies the Great Detective, a sleuth with seemingly superhuman intellectual abilities and often an ego and other personality flaws to match. In 1898, E.W. Hornung updated the Robin Hood legend with his cricket-champion gentleman thief, A.J. Raffles, thereby creating the third category of crime fiction hero. In creating Father Brown, Chesterton gave an entirely fresh approach to detective fiction. As author Neil Gaiman said, Father Brown “seems created less as a detective than as a reaction to detectives.” While still in the tradition of the Great Detective, Father Brown is “Great” with a twist. He is humble, and doesn’t claim to have any extraordinary mental skills. He is neither a professional policeman nor an amateur sleuth.

In his very first case, the priest outsmarts a notorious criminal, outdoes the police, and performs it all with humility and with a desire to save a man’s soul rather than to solve a crime. “The Blue Cross,” Chesterton’s first Father Brown story, opens with a police detective determined to track down a famous French thief named Flambeau who has just arrived in London. The detective is Aristide Valentin, whom we learn is no less than “the head of the Paris Police.” Notice that already two of the traditional hero-types are on stage: the cop and the crook. Their very names give us a hint of the sort of archetypes they represent: Flambeau—from the French for “torch”—carries an implication of flamboyance, while Valentin—from the Latin for “worthy”—suggests a worthy rival, and like Saint Valentine, a pious and doggedly determined character. Valentin learns that a priest is arriving from Essex with a valuable silver crucifix inset with sapphires to present at a religious conclave. Certain he knows Flambeau’s target, Valentin sets out to trap the thief.

But then Valentin loses the trail and finds himself in the wake of a series of bizarre pranks—events which have, nonetheless, led him to his quarry. He considers the odd course of his investigation as he hides behind a tree, eavesdropping as Flambeau, disguised as a priest, discusses theology with Father Brown: But when Valentin thought of all that had happened in between, of all that had led him to his triumph, he racked his brains for the smallest rhyme or reason in it. What had the stealing of a blue-and-silver cross from a priest from Essex to do with chucking soup at wall paper? What had it to do with calling nuts oranges, or with paying for windows first and breaking them afterwards? He had come to the end of his chase; yet somehow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed (which was seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but nevertheless missed the criminal. Here he had grasped the criminal, but still he could not grasp the clue. The prankster, of course, is Father Brown and his purpose was to both discern the motives of the disguised Flambeau and keep Valentin on hand in case of trouble.

Despite himself, Flambeau can’t resist boasting about his criminal prowess, but he soon gets a lesson in his craft from the little Essex priest. Finally, at a word from Father Brown, Valentin and his fellow officers reveal themselves: ...the three policemen came out from under the twilight trees. Flambeau was an artist and a sportsman. He stepped back and swept Valentin a great bow. “Do not bow to me, mon ami,” said Valentin with silver clearness. “Let us both bow to our master.” And they both stood an instant uncovered while the little Essex priest blinked about for his umbrella. Lofty Goals and Unusual Methods Father Brown broke the rules—often literally—as we see throughout “The Blue Cross,” and in various other stories, allowing crimes to be committed when it served a higher purpose. He saw himself as the agent of a Divine Power with an authority that could trump the laws of man. The paramount goal is saving a soul, not catching a criminal or solving a mystery. Although he was perfectly capable of brilliant deductions, Father Brown, unlike Holmes, often made use of intuition to solve crimes. He knew “whodunit” because he understood the mind of the sinner.

In “The Secret of Father Brown” (1927) he describes his method with the shocking revelation: “You see, it was I who killed all those people.” And then he explains: “I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully. I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.” That a man of God could look into the heart of evil is a prime example of a Chestertonian paradox. Paradox was at the heart of everything G.K. Chesterton did. He loved putting seemingly opposite ideas and images together to make a startling, and usually funny, point.

He once described courage as “a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.” A sane man is one “who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.” In his essay “Two Kinds of Paradox” he quipped that he often saw the word cosmic misprinted as comic, but that “the two are much the same.” This sort of paradoxical playfulness permeates all of Chesterton’s writing: theology, politics, poetry, and of course, his Father Brown stories. We find a good example of such a paradox at the end of “The Queer Feet” (1910), when Father Brown faces the wealthy and elite members of a dining club, ironically called “The Twelve True Fishermen,” and returns stolen silverware that he has taken from the repentant crook. When the club members ask about the thief, the priest responds: “I don’t know his real name...but I know something of his fighting weight, and a great deal about his spiritual difficulties. I formed the physical estimate when he was trying to throttle me, and the moral estimate when he repented.” “Oh, I say—repented!” cried young Chester, with a sort of crow of laughter.

Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. “Odd, isn’t it,” he said, “that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?” A bit later comes this exchange: “Did you catch this man?” asked the colonel, frowning. Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face. “Yes,” he said, “I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.” The Metaphysical Detective Story Howard Haycraft said that “it may well be Chesterton’s chief contribution to the genre that he perfected the metaphysical detective story.” This last notion—the metaphysical detective story—is easily misunderstood by the modern reader. What I believe Haycraft meant was that the little detective’s task was not to solve the crime, but, in some surprising and paradoxical manner, to set the world back to some semblance of moral order. What made this innocuous cleric and his exploits unique? The Father Brown stories had a depth that hadn’t been seen before in detective fiction.

Chesterton infused his puzzles with profound ideas, humor, morality, and paradox. They fulfill what Chesterton saw as the essential value of detective fiction, “that it is the earliest and only form of popular literature in which is expressed some sense of the poetry of modern life.” G.K. Chesterton in a 1912 caricature by Strickland published in Vanity Fair. • "By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece." G.K. Chesterton, “On Detective Novels,” Generally Speaking • “The detective story differs from every other story in this: that the reader is only happy if he feels a fool.” G.K. Chesterton, “On Detective Novels,” Generally Speaking Steven Steinbock is a freelance journalist living in Maine. Every Friday he blogs about mystery short stories at criminalbrief.com . This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Winter Issue #113 . the-little-priest-from-essex The Great Detectives: G.K. Chesterton - Father Brown - Strand Mag The Great Detectives: G.K.

Chesterton – Father Brown by John Peterson “My first case was just a small private affair about a man’s head being cut off.” Father Brown in “The Mask of Midas” It may surprise some of today’s readers of detective fiction to learn that Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was considered by his peers in the mystery-writers’ fraternity to have been the father of the cozy murder mystery or whodunit, the kind of detective story that held sway unchallenged through the twenties and thirties-the golden age of Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Philo Vance, and Ellery Queen. The spirit (or specter) of Chesterton dominated the genre and its writers until the American pulp magazines broke the mold with their urban mean streets and gun-toting, tough guy private-eyes. If we look back to the state of detective fiction in the first decade of this century, the figure of Sherlock Holmes dominated the landscape as no figure has before or since. As previously noted in the pages of this magazine, in the early 1900’s every magazine had to have its own version of Holmes.

And the task of equaling or surpassing Holmes was thought to entail creating a more relentlessly logical or more keenly observant or more wildly eccentric crime-solver who solved ever more baffling puzzles and uncovered ever more convoluted conspiracies. Note the improbable enigmas unraveled by Jacques Futrelle’s Thinking Machine, Professor Van Dusen (who in his first chess game defeated the world champion); Baroness Orczy’s contemptuous Man in the Corner (who solved the most baffling crimes merely by reading his newspaper in a restaurant); and M. P. Shiel’s reclusive Russian exile, Prince Zaleski (who solved the unsolvable through mystical intuition while reclining on cushions and smoking his hookah). The very excellence of the Holmes stories had repeatedly led detective fiction and its practitioners around a cul-de-sac. It was Chesterton who came to the rescue. Today’s readers know G. K. Chesterton as the author of the Father Brown mystery stories. In his own day, however, Chesterton was thought of primarily as a popular controversialist whose books and journalism covered religion, economics, history, travel, social justice, literary criticism, and much more.

Chesterton was also the first respected literary critic to write extensively on the subject of the detective story. He read these stories himself, literally by the hundreds-stuffing his pockets with them as he waited by a bookstall for the next train. He would typically miss his train and then wander off absentmindedly without paying for the books. It didn’t matter. The savvy bookseller would just send Mrs. Chesterton the bill. Chesterton did not claim the literary superiority of mystery stories over the “tea-table novels” that intellectuals of the time took so seriously. However, he did claim that detective stories presented a more accurate portrayal of life, packed as they were with dangers and surprises. He saw detective stories as a series of contests between individual free wills, unlike the conflicts between impersonal forces found in the modern novels (with their emphasis on psychological urges and social pressures). Their outcomes seemed so inevitable, whereas with murder mysteries, readers were kept in the dark about which of the characters had done the grisly deed, and why. As Father Brown explained in “The Man with Two Beards” (1925), “Our general experience is that every conceivable sort of man has been a saint.

And I suspect you will find, too, that every conceivable sort of man has been a murderer.” Chesterton was a great admirer of Holmes and wrote, in 1922, that “there have never been better detective stories, and I do not think that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has ever been thanked enough for them.” But he was unhappy with Conan Doyle’s imitators. He thundered against unlikely endings that introduced at the last minute the twin brother from America, or the secret society of Tibetan assassins, or the freshly-invented poison that leaves no trace, or the “proof” that a seemingly insignificant character was actually the arch villain. He deplored the emphasis on the mechanics of crime and detection, which he found sterile and dispiriting, preferring instead to write about the human aspects of crime-motives, emotions, choices, innocence, and guilt. He said that when, in the typical puzzler, a curate is quickly cleared of suspicion because he had been barred from the scene by a high fence, we will probably learn on the last page that he had once been a pole-vaulting champion.

“It always makes me feel,” he wrote, “that the last page is the worst, when the last page should be the best of all.” The only thrill, even of a common thriller, is concerned somehow with the conscience and the will; it involves finding out that men are worse or better than they seem, and that by their own choice. Chesterton insisted that the reader ultimately wanted enlightenment, not mystification, and that at the heart of every complicated detective yarn must lie the discovery of a simple truth-a discovery your nephew might yell from the window, such as: “The Archdeacon is Bloody Bill!” He argued that detective story readers wanted to be fooled, but fooled fairly. He favored the homey or domestic murder with the scope of the investigation narrowed to a brief time and a confined place, a limited number of suspects, and clues which are revealed to both the reader and the detective. His own first attempt at writing mysteries came in 1904 when he published a series of magazine stories that turned the Sherlock Holmes idea on its head. The hero of these stories is Basil Grant, a retired judge whose brother Rupert is a Holmes-struck private detective who investigates crimes and chases villains.

Basil inevitably solves Rupert’s cases by proving the villains are innocent, since no crimes have actually been committed. They were funny stories (still in print in the collection called The Club of Queer Trades), but there was nothing new in spoofing Sherlock Holmes. What was new was Judge Grant’s approach. Using the moral wisdom he had gained from his years on the bench, he succeeded by ignoring the facts (“Facts point in all directions, it seems to me,” he said.) in favor of what he called “the atmospheres.” It was the seed of an idea that would later blossom into Father Brown. The inspiration for making his detective a priest came out of Chesterton’s friendship with Father John O’Connor, the Roman Catholic pastor of St. Cuthbert’s in Bradford. It is a tale often repeated, which we have on Chesterton’s authority (as recorded in his Autobiography), later confirmed by O’Connor in his own memoirs. The two had spent some hours walking on Ilkley Moor, discussing this and that. The priest disagreed with some of Chesterton’s kindly views on begging and beggars, and felt obliged to inform his friend about some of the less savory practices of professional beggars. Chesterton was profoundly shocked.

Not then a Roman Catholic himself, Chesterton had assumed that priests would be less informed about such “glimpses of hell” than a Fleet Street journalist or well-read man of letters. But as Father Brown would remark in the first of the stories (“The Blue Cross,” 1910), “a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil.” Shortly after their walk, Chesterton and O’Connor sat with two Cambridge undergraduates who chatted with them about art and music. When the priest left the room, the two young men remarked, with worldly condescension, on the cloistered innocence of priests. Chesterton’s reaction bears repeating: To me, still almost shivering with the appallingly practical facts of which the priest had warned me, this comment came with such a colossal and crushing irony, that I nearly burst into a loud harsh laugh in the drawing room. For I knew perfectly well that, as regards all the solid Satanism which the priest knew and warred against with all his life, these two Cambridge gentlemen (luckily for them) knew about as much of real evil as two babies in the same perambulator.

Father Brown, the unassuming little popish priest who understood evil, was born out of that conversation. When asked in “The Hammer of God” (1910) how he had come to this understanding of the dark side of life if he were not himself a devil, Father Brown replied simply, “I am a man, and therefore have all devils in my heart.” The first twelve Father Brown stories appeared in America in The Saturday Evening Post, beginning in July, 1910. They were also published in England in Storyteller, beginning in September, 1910 and in Cassell’s, beginning in February, 1911. These stories were collected and published as The Innocence of Father Brown, which Ellery Queen called “the Miracle Book of 1911.” Chesterton the literary critic had succeeded in putting his ideas into practice. His stories established the conventions of the cozy whodunit.

The murder is usually committed out of greed, jealousy, pride, hatred, or fear by a friend or family member of the victim; the deed is done in the comfort of an exclusive restaurant or the courtyard of a Gothic church, rather than in a den of thieves or amidst a gang of thugs; the resolution is usually surprising, unless deduced by the astute reader from clues and hints the author has sprinkled throughout the story; and, most importantly, the detective’s success in solving the case rests not on his ability to identify the telltale cigar ash or interpret peculiar footprints, but on his ability to understand human motives. As Father Brown says in “The Secret of Flambeau” (1927), “When I tried to imagine the state of mind in which such a thing would be done, I realized that I might have done it myself under certain mental conditions. And then, of course, I knew who really had done it.” Father Brown’s appearance is as commonplace and conventional as possible. He is described as a short little man with a moon face and blinking, owlish eyes, who wears a black cassock and a clerical shovel hat, and carries a large, shabby black umbrella.

He is a companionable man, engaging and witty in conversation, and-most importantly-an attentive and sympathetic listener. When, for example in “The Blast of the Book”(1933), a certain Professor Openshaw meets Father Brown at a restaurant, he is surprised to find the priest engaged in an earnest discussion with the waiter, “apparently about the waiter’s most private affairs.” When Openshaw asks how the priest had come to know the man, it turns out that Father Brown dined there “every two or three months”, so talked with him “now and then.” The professor, who dined there five times a week, had never thought of the waiter at all. The incident hints at Father Brown’s skills as an amateur sleuth. Of course he was a keen observer and sound logician, but the real secret of his success was his practical knowledge of human nature and his ability to apply that knowledge to the problem at hand. “I can always grasp moral evidence easier than the other sorts,” he explained to a friend in “The Duel of Dr. Hirsch” (1914).

“I go by a man’s eyes and voice, and whether his family seems happy, and by what subjects he chooses-and avoids.” Readers familiar with the stories will recall the case of the perpetually cheerful man who shocked everyone, except Father Brown, by committing suicide (“The Three Tools of Death,” 1911). Father Brown admitted the man had been uncommonly cheery but asked if this cheerfulness was the kind that was communicated to others. “Was anyone else in his house cheerful but he?” the priest asked, thus opening a new avenue of inquiry in the mind of the young police investigator. In a similar way in “The Actor and the Alibi” (1926), Father Brown saw through the pose of a beautiful actress who was worshipped and admired by everyone around her except, as he was quick to note, her personal maid. “If you want to know what a lady is really like,” he said, “don’t look at her-look at some other woman who is always near to her, and especially one who is under her.

You will see in that mirror her real face.” Father Brown’s moral reasoning plays a part in every one of his stories, but his greatest success was his triumph over Flambeau, the notorious international jewel thief. Flambeau figured in most of Father Brown’s early adventures, first as an adversary and then as a penitent thief turned private investigator. He brought Father Brown into his most perplexing cases (Flambeau was no fool), which provided a springboard for a number of the stories. But exactly how did the priest manage to reform this die-hard criminal? Flambeau himself answers this question in “The Secret of Flambeau” (1927) after an overbearing American tourist belittles Father Brown’s methods. “Frankly, I don’t think it’s practical,” the man states. “Its practical effect would be that no criminal would ever reform.” Outraged, Flambeau says: “I stole for twenty years with these two hands; I fled from the police on these two feet. I hope you will admit that my activities were practical. Have I not been asked how it was possible for anyone to fall so low, told that no decent person could ever have dreamed of such depravity?

Do you think all that did anything but make me laugh? Only my friend told me that he knew exactly why I stole; and I have n by ACS | QUESTION I am trying to find out if Father Brown was partially modeled after a real priest and, if so, who? ANSWER Chesterton’s idea for a detective character along the lines of Father Brown had been fermenting for a period of years before the first Father Brown story published in 1910. He was a voracious, life-long reader of detective stories himself, once saying of his boyhood reading that, “If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was.” His own first attempt at writing in the genre came in 1904 when he published a series of magazine stories with a new sort of detective – funny retired judge named Basil Grant, described as “a star-gazer, a mystic, and a man who scarcely stirred out of his attic.” Part of the fun was that Grant’s brother, Rupert, was a conventional private detective whose logical deductions were inevitably checkmated by Basil’s more insightful moral wisdom.

Chesterton followed the Basil Grant series with a detective novel, The Man Who Was Thursday , a dream-like and enigmatic thriller about a poet-policeman assigned to patrol an art colony and to keep a suspicious eye on any pessimistic writers or intellectual fanatics he might find there. In 1909 Gilbert’s brother Cecil Chesterton, who had been watching these developments with more than casual interest, noted that as Gilbert was a philosopher as well as a detective-story writer, he was therefore logically destined to write “philosophical” detective stories. Cecil was quite sure these would feature some kind of “transcendental Sherlock Holmes.” His prophecy was fulfilled when Gilbert created the character of Father Brown. It is no secret how Gilbert finally decided to make an ordinary clergyman into his transcendental Holmes. Not then a Roman Catholic himself, he had a very good Roman Catholic friend, Father John O’Connor, a parish priest. Chesterton had assumed, as perhaps many have, that celibate priests are somehow shielded from life and from life’s full serving of evil. But priests are not shielded from evil.

As we will eventually hear Father Brown say, “a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil.” Chesterton had been surprised by what he later said were Father O’Connor’s glimpses of hell. “That the Catholic Church knew more about good than I did was easy to believe,” he would write in his Autobiography. “That she knew more about evil than I did seemed incredible.” One particular occasion had brought the point home with some force. Shortly after the priest was obliged to set him straight on some harrowing point of human depravity, Chesterton happened to overhear two undergraduates complaining, with an especially sophomoric condescension, about Father O’Connor and the cloistered innocence of priests. Chesterton’s reaction, recorded thirty years later, is worth repeating. To me, still almost shivering with the appallingly practical facts of which the priest had warned me, this comment came with such a colossal and crushing irony, that I nearly burst into a loud harsh laugh in the drawing-room.

For I knew perfectly well that, as regards all the solid Satanism which the priest knew and warred against with all his life, these two Cambridge gentlemen (luckily for them) knew about as much of real evil as two babies in the same perambulator. Chesterton adds this disclaimer, however. I permitted myself the grave liberty of taking my friend and knocking him about; beating his hat and umbrella shapeless, untidying his clothes, punching his intelligent countenance into a condition of pudding-faced fatuity, and generally disguising Father O’Connor as Father Brown. The disguise, as I have said, was a deliberate piece of fiction. Viewed in retrospect, the idea of a fictional priest-sleuth makes perfect sense. Part of the allure of the classic detective-story formula derives from the contrast between the murderer and the detective — between the brutality of the one and the gentility of the other. The classical Great Detective is refined and fastidious (we need only think of Holmes, Wimsey, Poirot, and Miss Marple); he traffics in vulgar atrocities but is not touched by them nor does he sink to that level, as so often do the detectives of the so-called “hard-boiled school” of crime fiction.

The detective who is also a clergyman might, in theory, press this contrast even further by offering saintly goodness, rather than fastidiousness, in opposition to the depravity and outrage of the criminals and crimes. Father O’Connor was destined to write his own memories of the origin of Father Brown in his 1937 memoir, Father Brown on Chesterton, now a book collector’s rarity. Of course O’Connor’s recollections match those given by Chesterton in his own Autobiography . Discover Chesterton Gilbert Keith Chesterton - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss. Gilbert Keith Chesterton Biography of Gilbert Keith Chesterton Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a prolific English critic and author of verse, essays, novels, and short stories. He is probably best known for his series about the priest-detective Father Brown who appeared in 50 stories. Between 1900 and 1936 Chesterton published some one hundred books. G.K. Chesterton was born in London into a middle-class family on May 29, 1874.

He studied at University College and the Slade School of Art (1893-96). Around 1893 he had gone through a crisis of skepticism and depression and during this period he experimented with the Ouija board and grew fascinated with diabolism. In 1895 Chesterton left University College without a degree and worked for the London publisher Redway, and T. Fisher Unwin (1896-1902). Chesterton later renewed his Christian faith; the courtship of his future wife, Frances Blogg, whom he married in 1901 also helped him to pull himself out of his spiritual crisis. In 1900 appeared Greybeards At Play, Chesterton's first collection of poems. Robert Browning (1903) and Charles Dickens (1906) were literary biographies. The Napoleon Of Notting Hill (1904) was Chesterton's first novel, a political fantasy, in which London is seen as a city of hidden fairytale glitter. In The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) Chesterton depicted fin-de-siï¿½cle decadence.

In 1909 Chesterton moved with his wife to Beaconsfield, a village twenty-five miles west of London, and continued to write, lecture, and travel energetically. Between 1913 and 1914 Chesterton was a regular contributor for the Daily Herald. In 1914 he suffered a physical and nervous breakdown. After World War I Chesterton became leader of the Distributist movement and later the President of the Distributist League, promoting the idea that private property should be divided into smallest possible freeholds and then distributed throughout society.. In 1922 Chesterton was converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, and thereafter he wrote several theologically oriented works, including lives of Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas. He received honorary degrees from Edinburgh, Dublin, and Notre Dame universities. Chesterton died on June 14, 1936, at his home in Beaconsfield. The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission. Forum Discussions on Gilbert Keith Chesterton Recent Forum Posts on Gilbert Keith Chesterton G.K. Chesteron - a forefather of steam-punk?

I have been reading a steam-punk novel called The Affinity Bridge by George Mann. It is not great literature, but the imagery is good. One of the plot strands revolves around mechanized men, termed 'automatons' - note, not robots. That reminded me of a Father Brown story in which there was a shop full of automatons. In The Man Who Was Thursday there are episodes reminiscent of steam-punk. In one chapter, a secret policeman is sitting down at a table in a tavern, when the whole table descends into an underground system of tunnels. Even without this science fiction stuff, the Edwardian era, when, I guess, Chesterton wrote much of the best stuff, was one in which there was an inte... Posted By kev67 in Chesterton, Gilbert Keith || 2 Replies Orwell's criticism of Chesterton I have recently read two George Orwell essays which criticized G.K. Chesterton. Both essays were superb btw. In his essay Antisemitism in Britain , he accuses Chesteron of antisemitism.

In another, Notes on Nationalism, he accuses him of uncritically lavishing Latin countries, such as Italy and France, with the sort of jingoistic praise he would have been embarrassed to hear about his own country. Orwell supposed that his motive in both cases was his support for the Catholic church. Chesterton was not the only writer or thinker that Orwell criticizes, but I am not very familiar with many of the others. I am not entirely surprised. The impression I get is that G.K. Chesteron ... Posted By kev67 in Chesterton, Gilbert Keith || 1 Reply G.K. Chesterton - any good? I have recently started reading some Father Brown stories. I am sorry to say, so far, I am not too bowled over. Father Brown seems to be one in the history of eccentric detectives, this time a Roman Catholic priest. The crimes are flashy but improbable. A puzzle is outlined and we all wait around until Father Brown clears it up for us. No attempt is made to get under his skin of the characters. The Wire, it is not. It is a bit like Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie, but not as good.

I will continue reading them, but I was a bit disappointed. I wondered whether Father Brown was typical of Chesterton's writing. I noticed one of G.K. Chesterton's books being promoted in a branch of Wate... Posted By kev67 in Chesterton, Gilbert Keith || 20 Replies Christmas Hi there, in his article "Christmas", Chesterton includes this rather obscure paragraph: Another instance of the same illogicality I observed the other day at some kind of "At Home." I saw what appeared to be a human being dressed in a black evening-coat, black dress-waistcoat, and black dress-trousers, but with a shirt-front made of Jaeger wool. What can be the sense of this sort of thing? If a man thinks hygiene more important than convention (a selfish and heathen view, for the beasts that perish are more hygienic than man, and man is only above them because he is more conventional), if, I say, a man thinks that hygiene is more important than convention, what on earth is there to oblige...

Posted By Juan in Chesterton, Gilbert Keith || 0 Replies A Christmas Carol poem by G.K.Chesterton The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap, His hair was like a light. (O weary, weary were the world, But here is all aright.) The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast His hair was like a star. (O stern and cunning are the kings, But here the true hearts are.) The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart, His hair was like a fire. (O weary, weary is the world, But here the world's desire.) The Christ-child stood on Mary's knee, His hair was like a crown, And all the flowers looked up at Him, And all the stars looked down... Posted By jigz in Chesterton, Gilbert Keith || 0 Replies Hello "Therefore your doom is on you, Is on you and your kings" From which works of Chesterton?... Posted By konohazuku in Chesterton, Gilbert Keith || 3 Replies Missing works I'm a fan of G.K. Chesterton as an author, and searched for several works of his which returned no results. To wit: Heretics, Orthodoxy, Eugenics and Other Evils, and probably more.

The reason I think these are interesting is because of the apparent recursive recapitulation of History in the nature of events which men choose to manage in order to dispose of their responsibilities. These dispositions have tended to separate individuals on more than mere personal issues, but rather on moral issues affecting the innocent and the experienced. It seems Mr. Chesterton has sufficient nails on his literary fingers to dig into the oily skin of reptillian hypocrites.:)...

Posted By hillhopper in Chesterton, Gilbert Keith || 1 Reply Father Brown (G.K.Chesterton) Father Brown (creator: G K Chesterton ) G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton (1874-1936) was a prolific author of biographies, essays, articles, novels (of which the best known is The Man Who Was Thursday, 1907), and plays and poems on many subjects, but is probably best remembered by most people now for his fifty-two Father Brown stories, published in five volumes: The Innocence of Father Brown (1910), The Wisdom of Father Brown (1913), The Incredulity of Father Brown (1923), The Secret of Father Brown (1927) and The Scandal of Father Brown (1935). Father Brown (surely the first of the clerical detectives) with his simple face "as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling" may look like a clumsy and dumpy, if amiable, little clergyman, but he has a very shrewd understanding of human behaviour.

As he explains, "A man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil" - and he certainly isn't. It is this mixture of outer innocence and deep understanding and experience of evil that makes him so interesting. As he says in The Hammer of God (one of his best stories): "I am a man, and therefore have all devils in my heart". The plots of the stories can certainly be far-fetched, and Chesterton himself described the first of them as "very slight and improbable". It introduced characters like the "colossus of crime" Flambeau. "It is quite certain," we are told, "that he invented a portable pillarbox which he put up at corners in quiet suburbs on the chance of strangers dropping postal orders into it". Such stories may be dated, but they are still strong in surprises: don't be amazed if the murderer turns out to be the Chief of Police. Or if Flambeau is converted from crime by Father Brown, and ends up as a fellow crime investigator and Father Brown's "only friend in the world".

Chesterton never lost his sense of fun and he didn't take the stories too seriously, finding that he could turn them out in a few days using notes on the back of an envelope when he needed the money. He himself admitted, " I have myself written some of the worst mystery stories in the world." Yet a number of them can still be read with real pleasure, even though, as Chesterton pointed out there is "a good deal of inconsistency and inaccuracy on minor points; not the least of such flaws being the general suggestion that Father Brown had nothing particular to do, except to hang about in any household where there was likely to be a murder". Father Brown was based on a real Irish Roman Catholic priest, Father John O'Connor of St Cuthbert's, Bradford (to whom The Secret of Father Brown is dedicated), whose truth, explained Chesterton, was "stranger than fiction", and who guided Chesterton through his own conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1922. Father Brown isn't a copy of his physical appearance or nationality, but shares his spiritual understanding and experience of the evil in the world.

What intrigued Chesterton was the chance of "constructing a comedy in which a priest should appear to know nothing and in fact know more about crime than the criminals". And it is this that still intrigues readers today. The later Father Brown stories, written after Chesterton had converted to Catholicism, are thought by some to be a little more dogmatic and less fun than the earlier ones, but I can't say I was aware of this. Some of the Father Brown stories became the subject of a 13 part TV series in 1974, and have been issued on DVD. Made by ATV in the UK, and featuring Kenneth More (who had been reluctant to take the part but was eventually won over by Lew Grade), they show careful concern for period detail, but don't work too well as the emphasis was shifted from Father Brown to the unlikely characters with whom he was involved. Chesterton himself had written that "in Father Brown it was the chief feature to be featureless. The point of him was to appear pointless ... his commonplace exterior was meant to contrast with unsuspected vigilance and intelligence". This makes him a difficult character to play, and Kenneth More's initial concerns proved well founded.

The American Chesterton Society has an informative website about Chesterton and all his other works (although not much about Father Brown). They certainly wouldn't agree that it is only his Father Brown stories that are still remembered today! The site includes the complete first Father Brown story, The Blue Cross , so here's a chance to try it out. Stephen Kendrick "borrowed" the character and included a young Father Brown in Night Watch , a story in which he meets up with Sherlock Holmes. The Penguin The Complete Father Brown is still in print, and it includes all the Father Brown books. Please sign my GUEST BOOK . All comments, contributions (or corrections) welcomed! G. K. Chesterton’s ‘Way of Wonder’: Q&A with author Dale Ahlquist | America Magazine G. K. Chesterton’s ‘Way of Wonder’: Q&A with Author Dale Ahlquist Sean Salai, S.J. | May 11 2016 - 9:25am | 0 comments Dale Ahlquist is a Minnesota-based Catholic lay apologist who serves as president of the American Chesterton Society and publisher of Gilbert Magazine. He holds a B.A. from Carleton College and an M.A. from Hamline University.

A leading authority on the British Catholic writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) and his thought, Mr. Ahlquist has been author, contributor or editor on more than 15 books about this 20th-century giant of Catholic thought. He is the creator and host of The Apostle of Common Sense, an EWTN television series on Chesterton’s works, and co-founder of Chesterton Academy in Minneapolis. He is also a frequent writer and media commentator on Chestertonian subjects. Mr. Ahlquist’s newest book, The Way of Wonder: Classic Wisdom from G. K. Chesterton , was published April 1 by Pauline Media. On March 7, I interviewed him by email about it. Chesterton produced a sizeable output in his lifetime, writing everything from plays and poetry to books on economics and history. Other than the BBC’s slick new “Father Brown” television series, based loosely on his priest-detective fiction, why should Catholics care about Chesterton today? I'm glad you said “based loosely” on Father Brown. The BBC series, I would say, is based on a character with the same name as Father Brown.

But the fact that they went to this character shows a respect for Chesterton among the detective fiction community. And in this case, Catholics should be happy that a priest is at least being portrayed in a very positive, even heroic light. On a larger scale, Catholics should rejoice that Chesterton is being rediscovered. He is a timeless writer, in many ways more relevant today than when he first wrote a century ago. He has a lot to teach us. You’ve already edited many editions of Chesterton’s works, contributed to various works on him and written several books on him. What inspired this one? To be frank, I was approached by a Pauline sister who also happens to be a member of the American Chesterton Society. She told me about the “classic wisdom” series from Pauline media and said a book on Chesterton was required! When a nun tells you to do something, it's best to do it. Who is your audience? Everybody. This is an entirely accessible book. What is “the way of wonder” referenced in your title? Christ said that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. One of the most childlike qualities is wonder.

Chesterton re-introduces astonishment at creation, at the gift of life. “The best kind of giving,” he says, “is thanksgiving.” What sort of “classic wisdom” will readers find in this book? Chesterton is a “classic” by virtue of having stood the test of time, by being read across several generations. But “classic” also means being fresh even when its old, by always being true. Chesterton points to the truth through every available means. He tries to get us to see things for the first time, even though we may think we are already familiar with them. For an extremely large man, Chesterton displayed a remarkably light touch in his writings, and some admirers have accordingly dubbed him “the prince of paradox.” What is paradox and why is it important for reading Chesterton? Chesterton makes great use of paradox, the surprising truth, the unexpected truth, the truth that even has a contradictory element in it, because that is the nature of truth itself.

It is paradoxical that God should come to us a baby, born of a virgin, that God should suffer and die, that he should rise from the dead, that he should build his church on such a fumbling and comical character as Peter. Chesterton makes us see how strange the truth really is, which means occasionally giving us a jolt. It is one reason why he is so delightful. Like Chesterton, you are a convert to Catholicism . What inspired your interest in him? As an Evangelical, I was a big fan of C. S. Lewis. Lewis led me to read Chesterton. And after I started reading Chesterton, I left Lewis behind. What is the goal of your work on Chesterton? When I started the American Chesterton Society, the goal was simply to get as many people as possible to read Chesterton and become friends with him. That hasn't changed much in the last 20 years. How has Chesterton influenced your faith and writing? It was Chesterton who brought me to the Catholic Church. He has made me a better writer because he has made me a better thinker, but his humility and mystical insight and goodness have made me a better person.

What’s your favorite work by Chesterton and why? What an awful question! Even though I consider Orthodoxy essential and his book on Charles Dickens exquisite, I love his essays best, I think. I start each day with a Chesterton essay. There are over five thousand of them. Whatever he happens to talking about that day is something that I happen to need. Today we’re increasingly aware of injustices in our global economic system. Noting these same problems in the early 20th century, Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc (known collectively as “Chesterbelloc”) argued that capitalism and socialism are two sides of the same coin, insofar as they both concentrate ownership of the means of production in the hands of a few (i.e., corporations vs. governments) at the expense of the many. As an alternative to these doomed systems, they advocated distributism, a dispersal of ownership after the fashion of the medieval European guild system. What do you think about the feasibility of their suggestions for our world today? I suppose the best response is that capitalism and socialism have not turned out to be feasible either. The present state of the world is a monument to the failures of capitalism and socialism.

Chesterton and Belloc's ideas are based on the Catholic social teaching of Pope Leo XIII. This teaching would be feasible if all or even most Catholics embraced it. We could change the world. It is the idea that an economy should be based more on the family's interest rather than the individual's or the state's interests. If more people were self-sufficient and independent, we would have a more stable economy. Widespread wage slavery makes people dependent and also passive. It leads to an entitlement mentality and the inability for us to do things for ourselves and take control of our lives. The good news for distributism is that more and more people are dissatisfied with things as they are: That is why there is a renewed interest in Chesterton's ideas about this. If you could say one thing to Pope Francis about G. K. Chesterton, what would it be? Beatify G. K. Chesterton. What do you want people to take away from your life and work? Chesterton tried to bring sanity to an insane world. Using him as an inspiration, I have tried to do the same thing. I hope when my days are done, I will have succeeded somewhat. The revival of common sense.

What is your favorite Scripture passage and why? Almost a worse question than what is my favorite Chesterton book! But I have a particular affection for Jeremiah 6:16: “Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient path, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” It is the corollary of Chesterton's line, “A dead thing goes with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it.” The old way, revealed to us long ago, is still the good way, the thing we have to recover. It is the opposite of the way of the world. And it is the only thing that will bring peace. Any final thoughts? For some reason a Chesterton quote comes to mind: “The one glorious thing on God's green earth is to fight a losing battle…and not lose it!” Sean Salai, S.J., is a contributing writer at America. The Mystery of the Clerical Detective The Mystery of the Clerical Detective It�s no mystery why priests and religious are natural choices to be the protagonists of mystery fiction.

What is a mystery, after all, but the story of a confrontation between good and evil, an attempt to restore justice to creation, and to shed light into the darkness? This is what ministry is about, as well, so calling the ordained or vowed forces of good to the scene of a crime makes perfect literary sense. When we consider the question of clerics and mysteries, the first figure most of us think of is G.K. Chesterton�s Father Brown. The first Father Brown story was published in 1910 in the Saturday Evening Post, years before Chesterton had even converted to Roman Catholicism. Forty-eight Father Brown stories were published before Chesterton�s death, and for many, the unassuming Catholic priest, who solved mysteries through close observation and intuition, remains the model clerical detective, unmatched by any subsequent efforts by other authors. Not that these authors haven�t tried. Their success depends on the same factors by which we judge any piece of fiction in general and mystery fiction in particular: is the writing evocative or flat and cliched? Are the characters three-dimensional, or are they just types who do little but lie flat on the page?

Do the situations in the narrative arise organically and naturally, or are they obvious constructs? And what does the religious identity of the detective add to the story? Is it relevant to the tale, or is it merely a gimmick in a narrative that could it have just as well have been told with a gas station attendant searching for clues instead? Let�s see how this works: Kate Gallison has penned a series featuring an female Episcopal priest named Mother Lavinia Grey. In Grave Misgivings , Mother Grey must figure out why the grave of a young woman�s grandfather isn�t where it�s supposed to be, and then who could have murdered an old enemy of the same grandfather. The plot isn�t much to begin with, and it�s not helped by simplistic writing or enhanced by the fact that the sleuth at hand is a priest. There�s nothing distinctively spiritual about her perspective, her job doesn�t impact the case at all, nor does she bring any particular moral weight to the resolution. Just a little better, which means still not very good, is the series featuring Sister Mary Helen, written by a real religious sister, Carol Ann O'Marie.

I read Death of an Angel , in which the intrepid older Sister Mary Helen solves the mystery of a local murder-rapist, and tries to help a sad young woman with problems of her own. Granted, here the protagonist acts out of her vocation - she's compassionate, and one of the victims of the murderer was an acquaintance of hers. But the mystery itself is amazingly clumsy, and the characters are flatter than my floor. Not exactly a good read. Jesuit priest and novelist Fr. Brad Reynolds is worlds beyond either Gallison�s or O'Marie's attempts in at least one of the volumes of his series featuring Father Mark Townsend, solving mysteries up in Washington state. Cruel Sanctuary is a surprisingly gripping book, rich with detail, psychological truth , a plot in which events are consistent and reasonable, rather than randomly picked from the Red Herring Basket, and a protagonist whose spiritual life actually impacts his actions as he gets involved in trying to figure out why street kids are getting murdered in Seattle.

He's concerned about the street kids, but what gets him engaged in the mystery is that a note from him to one of the kids that he'd attached to some money is found on the dead body of the boy, implicating the priest, if not in his murder, at least in some people's minds, an inappropriate relationship with the boy. He's got to find out who's really responsible, not only out of compassion for the boy and his family, but to clear his own name as well. It makes sense. His attempts to knit the clues together ring true. A lot of people like the mysteries of Notre Dame Thomistic scholar Ralph McInerny. He's writes about Father Dowling under his own name, Sister Mary Teresa Dempsy under the pseudonym of Monica Quill, and has a series of mysteries set at Notre Dame University as well. I've never read a Father Dowling, I'll admit, but I have read one each of the others, and I have to admit, I wasn't terribly impressed. No, we're not looking for great literature when we read mysteries, but we are looking for something a bit more than a not-to-hard to solve puzzle with a jabs at Church politics thrown in the mix.

Over the past months, new books featuring two of the more popular clerical sleuths have been published: The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain by Andrew Greeley, featuring Bishop Blackie Ryan traveling to France to help find a popular priest who�s gone missing, and The Sacrifice by William Kienzle (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $22.95), in which Father Rober Koesler, first seen in The Rosary Murders back in 1979, again sets to work, solving a church-related mystery in the rectories and pews of Detroit. We won�t be reviewing the Greeley book here, simply because I only had fifteen minutes to read it in the bookstore, and it would have taken at least twenty-five. But The Sacrifice did come into my life, and, after a thorough reading within the inescapable confines of a long car trip, I�m here to reveal that it�s an astonishingly dreadful book.

The mystery is this: who planted the bomb that blew up in a church just about the time the entrance procession for the liturgy to re-ordain Episcopal priest George Wheatly into the Catholic Church should have made it to ground zero in the sanctuary, but for a delay from a mysterious phone call to Father Wheatly himself? The problems with this book are many. First, there�s the matter of plot. The crime at the center of the novel is simply implausible. Even if the entrance of former Episcopal priests into Roman Catholic ministry has evoked some tensions on both sides, no one, to my knowledge, has attempted to blow anyone up over the matter, nor would they. Then there�s character. Most of them in The Sacrifice are drawn directly from the Writer�s Stereotype Grab Bag: The saintly, popular Episcopal priest; his son the priest and his status-hungry wife; his daughter the lesbian Episcopal seminarian, and the grumpy disaffected conservative Romans.

Actually, those in the last category, two priests who make their appearances at the beginning and end of the book grumbling about heretics and scandal, aren�t from the Grab Bag: they�re no one but Statler and Waldorf, the two old guys who heckled from the balcony on The Muppet Show, in clerics. But I digress. Not as badly as Kienzle digresses in his novel, though. The book is actually less of a mystery than a string of expository chapters strung together for the dual purpose of presenting us with a series of red herrings as well as boring us with long, incredible conversations about church matters at what would be the oddest, most improbable times in reality. Somehow, in the minutes before the ceremony is to begin, Father Koesler manages to have two pages-long conversation with three priests (including Statler and Waldorf), in which they all offer their views, in the most stilted agitprop-type language imaginable, on the consequences of ordaining a married Episcopal. You get the idea.

Clerical mysteries can be entertaining, and they can be educational as well, as the inner workings of church both past and present and the minds of religious are revealed to the interested reader. It�s clear, however, that at this point in his long career, Kienzle is less interested in either authentic mystery fiction or opening a reader�s eyes to a different world than he is in simple and simplistic griping about church matters. It makes for a tendentious piece of work, and one that doesn�t even come close to meeting Chesterton�s explanation of what the �Ideal Detective Novel�, starring clerics or laity, should be about: �The inconsistencies of human nature are indeed terrible and heart-shaking things, to be named with the same note of crisis as the hour of death and the Day of Judgment. They are not all fine shades, but some of them very fearful shadows, made by the primal contrast of darkness and light. Both the crimes and the confessions can be as catastrophic as lightning.

Indeed, The Ideal Detective Story might do some good if it brought men back to understand that the world is not all curves, but that there are some things that are as jagged as the lightning-flash or as straight as the sword.� Clerical or vowed religious characters are popular detectives in mystery fiction. Here are a few who star in their own series of books, which are, of course, of varying quality: Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton�s �little Essex priest� Brother Cadfael, the medieval monastic apothecary created by Ellis Peters. Sister Frevisse, a member of a medieval English religious community, created by Margaret Fraser. I enjoyed this one. Sister Fidelma , Peter Tremayne�s seventh-century Celtic nun. These, too, are good reads, although one has to doubt that life for women in 7th century Ireland was really this idyllic. Thomistic scholar Ralph McInerny pens mysteries featuring Father Dowling and Sister Mary Teresa , the latter under the penname of Monica Quill Sr. Mary Helen is featured in a series of books written by a real religious sister, Carol Anne O�Marie, CSJ.

Father Mark Townsend solves mysteries in the Pacific Northwest, home of his author, Fr. Brad Reynolds, S.J. Sister Joan confronts crime that touches her community, the Daughters of Compassion in Cornwall, England, in books written by Veronica Black. Once Father, now Bishop Blackie Ryan is the creation of Father Andrew Greeley. There are series featuring non-Catholic clerical sleuths as well, from almost every denomination, one of the most memorable being Harry Kemelman�s books featuring Rabbi David Small � Friday the Rabbi Slept Late being the first. I also like the mysteries of Faye Kellerman , set in the world of Orthodox Judaism. Here are a couple of websites with more information:

Question: What is the name of G.K. Chesterton's detective priest?
Answer: Father BROWN.